"If Governments are constituted."——Sidney.
"Well, keep your own heart, if silence is best,
Tho a woman, for once, I'll in ignorance rest."
Haley's Happy Prescription.
"If she has stolen the color of her ribbons from another."——Spect. No. 4.
"If we are rightly informed."——Same, No. 8.
"If she is tall enough, she is wife enough."——No. 66.
"If you are in such haste, how came you to forget the miscellanies?"——Swift's Letter to Mr. Tooke.
"If men's highest assurances are to be believed."——Same.
Shall we say that the use of the indicative after if in the foregoing examples is improper or ungrammatical? By no means. Yet the verbs express something conditional or doubtful; and therefore Lowth's rule cannot be well founded.
Let the foregoing passages be contrasted with the following.